Prevent employee burnout with these suggestions

May 18, 2011

Most of us have encountered employee burnout in one way or another – whether we have felt burned out ourselves or recognized it in one of our peers. Fortunately, there are plenty of simple steps you can take to ensure that burnout doesn’t get the best of you or your employees.

Preventing burnout

Have fun – Making room for fun can reduce some stress and help to keep employees motivated when they are on the brink of burnout.

Switch it up – Let employees work on new projects or teams when they’ve been concentrating on one thing for a long time, like Facebook is doing with Hackamonth.

Encourage breaks – It’s great to have employees that don’t want to stop working until they get things accomplished. Unfortunately, those are the people that are bound to burn out fastest. If you have employees like this, encourage them to take walks or go on a coffee run – anything to keep them from going stir crazy.

For those times when burnout can’t be prevented, there are a few things you can do to help ensure that your employees don’t become fed up.

How to deal with burnout

Accept it – Burnout isn’t always avoidable so it’s essential to pay attention to the signs such as lethargy, decreased socializing or irritability.

Communicate – Growing businesses often go through changes that leave employees frustrated. Making sure your employees know that they can talk to you is an excellent way to stop burnout before it gets out of hand.

Employee burnout can’t always be avoided but there are a number of ways to cope with it when it develops. Implementing these suggestions can help keep burnout at bay and help your employees cope with it.